


MacArthur Park

by thebasement_archivist



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Bad Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1998-06-30
Updated: 1998-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-20 05:43:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11329704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebasement_archivist/pseuds/thebasement_archivist
Summary: Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived atThe Basement, which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address onThe Basement's collection profile.





	MacArthur Park

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

 

MacArthur Park by Amy Vincent

MacArthur Park  
by Amy Vincent 

* * *

The dark, black night filled Mulder's room at the mental hospital like dark, black smoke. Mulder was afraid of fire, and so he was afraid of smoke too. And tonight he was afraid.

He'd been put in the mental hospital because he had another nervous breakdown. Mulder had nervous breakdowns the way some people had vacations -- ten to fourteen days a year, not counting sick days, all over the country or sometimes just at home. He was very unhappy and very unstable, because of the demons that drove him, day and night, ever since he was a child, laughing and mocking him, and sometimes people at the FBI wondered about leaving him on the job. But Skinner always stood up for him - when people talked to him about firing Mulder, he would say "No other agent is more dedicated, brilliant, insightful, intelligent, hardworking, punctual or determined than Mulder. So get off his fucking back! And don't come in here with these fucking complaints anymore!" He wouldn't let them fire Mulder.

This breakdown was different from the others, though. Usually he went over the brink because of his sister, the beautiful, missing Samantha whose fate he had never discovered and whose face hung before him every time he closed his eyes, even to blink, or the Smoking Man, who had hurt him and taunted him and might even turn out to be his father, and he hated him even more than the guy he originally thought was his father, or because of the demons, which he could never banish from his soul, even though he was an Oxford-trained psychologist. But now he was in the mental hospital because Scully had been thrown out of the FBI. She, the only defense between him and his demons, was gone as if she had been sucked down a bathtub drain.

Scully's mom, who loved him just like he was her very own son, had come by earlier that day and explained to him what had happened long ago. "Once, when Dana was a very little girl, she went out with her brothers, who were learning to set fires. They decided to burn down the Lutheran Church down the road. Always a tomboy, Dana joined in. But once the fire was lit, and burned, and the fire department was too late, Dana began to cry. She realized that she had done something she had no right to do -- something that she couldn't take back. Something that might not be removed from a juvenile record."

Scully had lied about the arson on her FBI application; she knew they would not accept her, and she wanted to be an FBI agent more than anything, even more than being a doctor, despite the fact that she'd gone to medical school. A few days ago, the applications were reveiwed and somebody caught her lie. Now Scully had been fired from the FBI, and Mulder could not go on without her.

Other people at the FBI, like Tom Colton, went to Skinner again, trying to get him to fire Mulder, because this was too flaky. But Skinner would not listen to them.

"Mulder is still the best fucking agent in the whole fucking FBI!" he said. "You fucking critics ought to shut up and get the fuck out of my office!" At the same time he felt gulity, because he hadn't stopped them from firing Scully. He knew that he was to blame for Mulder's mental breakdown and he knew he would protect Mulder, no matter what they tried to do to him.

As Mulder lay on the cold iron cot, he began thinking of his favorite song -- the one that had always reminded him of his partner. It was a sad song, so it fit them now, and he wasn't sure why he had always thought of it before. But now he began to sing it to himself in his tiny cell.

"Spring was never waiting for us, girl --it ran one step ahead as we followed in the dance," he sang, his voice all hoarse and rusty because he had been screaming since he went nuts. "Between the parted pages and were pressed in love's hot fevered iron like a striped pair of pants -- "

How true those words were, he thought. He had a pinstriped pair of pants and had ironed them, and it was just like that. Of course, he and Scully hadn't been in love or anything, but spring still hadn't been waiting for them. He began to cry again, and outside the nurses shook their heads. They knew he would never recover this time.

***

Scully had not heard about Mulder's breakdown. He hadn't called her, and she decided that he must not need her or wonder where she was. Maybe he was disappointed in her for the lie. She didn't want to know.

She had a new job now, and a new life. She was the head of the physics department at McCrory College, and was ready to start over. It would be easier than working on the X-Files with Mulder. She wouldn't get shot at, or hunted down, or stalked, except maybe when dissertations were reviewed. And most of her coworkers were women, so she wouldn't have to deal with the annoying rumors that had followed her and Mulder.

Even now she was annoyed by those stupid, stupid rumors. Why would people assume that she and Mulder were romantically involved? She couldn't understand how anybody could be that stupid! She and Mulder had never, ever had even one romantic thought about each other, and never flirted, and never wanted to be anything more than best friends, even when he would touch her face or hold her hand or kiss her. She knew that he had behaved just like that with his old partner, Reggie Purdue, which had also made people talk, but Reggie had understood that that was just Mulder. Scully understood that too, and couldn't see why everyone else didn't as well.

Still, he was the other half of her soul. He carried her soul in his soul, carried her with him everywhere, and she went with him everywhere. She was even with him in the mental hospital, although she didn't know it yet. She knew that even if he was disappointed in her lies, he would someday forgive her and return to their friendship.

While she was thinking about this and grading some papers, she didn't look behind her. Outside the window was Lucifer Greyskull, a deadly killer she and Mulder had put in jail years before. He watched her as she turned on the radio, and caught her favorite song -- the one that reminded her so much of Mulder, and of the life she would have without him.

She sang along -- "There will be another song for me, for I will sing it -- there will be another dream for me, someone will bring it -- " Scully started to cry really really hard, but she could still sing. "I will drink the wine while it is warm and never let you catch me looking at the sun -- "

The gentle tune of "MacArthur Park" was suddenly stopped when Greyskull jumped through the window and grabbed Scully! She was too surprised even to scream for help as he dragged her out the window and took her off to the woods. In her empty office, the radio kept playing the words that kept playing in her head even as he kidnapped her:

"MacArthur Park is melting in the dark --all the sweet green icing flowing down --Someone left the cake out in the rain -- I don't think that I can take it 'cause it took so long to bake it and I'll never have that recipe again -- oh, no --- "

***

Mulder woke up really suddenly and saw that Maria Covarubiyas was at the foot of his bed. She was aninformant of his and really, really good looking, but they had not slept together because he was never really sure if she was evil or not. She was standing with her arms crossed and a syringe held out in front of her.

"You have to get up, Fox," she said. "You have to walk out of here. Scully has been kidnapped and you are the only one who can find her."

Mulder jumped up and went straight for the door. He couldn't let Scully be kidnapped! She was out there somewhere and he would be able to find her. Even though the demons that tore his brain apart day after day would still be with him, all the time, the way Scully was with him but not so nice, he could not lay there while Scully was in danger. He drove straight to FBI headquarters and found Skinner.

He ran right into Skinner's office even though Skinner was having a meeting.

"Where is she? What have they done to her?" He shouted at Skinner.

"Calm the fuck down, Agent Mulder! You will get a chance to find her, but get a fucking grip on yourself!"

Tom Colton and Phoebe Green, who was visiting from Scotland yard, both jumped up.

"You can't let him search for her. He's crazy!"

"Crazy like a Fox," Skinner said. "Agent Mulder is thebest fucking agent in the Bureau, and he's gonna lead the fucking team to find her. So get used to it!"

Phoebe was mad because she had only come to America to make Fox fall in love with her again, and she didn't want him chasing after Scully. But she knew Skinner was right, and so did Tom Colton.

Everyone turned to Mulder to see what to do. Mulder started putting together his plan -- all the while, humming the song he knew would guide him to Scully like the North Star guides the vessels of seamen of olden times.

"I will take my life into my hands, and I will use it -- I will win the worship in their eyes and I will lose it -- I will have the things that I desire and my passion flow like rivers to the sky -- "

***

Scully woke up in a dark, black room and was very afraid. Lucifer Greyskull was sharpening the knives she remembered from his earlier crimes.

"What are you doing?" She said. "Why have you done this?"

"You put me in jail for 10 years! You will pay for this, and then Mulder will pay when he is out of the mental hospital and I can get to him!"

Scully was surprised. Mulder was in the mental hospital! He had had another breakdown and she hadn't been with him. He probably thought she didn't even care what happened to him, and she had been thinking that he didn't care what happened to her. They had both been so stupid and so wrong, and the only thing that bothered her about dying was that she would never get to tell him so.

Greyskull lifted up his knife to kill her and she started to scream -- but then a gun fired! Greyskull fell down dead and Mulder had rescued her. He ran in and they shook hands.

"Scully -- you're alive!"

"Mulder -- you're okay!"

Both of them knew how wrong they had been and they knew that they were forgiven.

Skinner came up to them and said, "Scully, we need you back at the X-Files. If they want to review the fucking applications again, they have to go through me."

Scully giggled. "Let's go, Mulder. We have to learn to work with each other once more, as if we never met before, except we're close friends now -- and we can make it all like it used to be."

He smiled.

Together, they found the recipe again.

THE END

This is the first in my series "A Tramp Shining" - the first 22/? will be posted sometime in the next fourteen months.


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